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On Friday 17 July 2009, at around 11:30 a.m., our colleague Shadi Sadr was abducted by a group of officers in civilian clothes while she was walking on Keshavarz Boulevard, Tehran, to a mosque for Friday prayers.

The Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) international solidarity network is deeply concerned by the violent abduction and detention without charge of human rights lawyer, Ms. Shadi Sadr, by state agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Dozens of women’s and human rights groups condemn the recent arrest and imprisonment of Iranian women’s rights activist Alieh Eghdamdoust. She will serve a sentence of three years imprisonment for participating in a lawful and peaceful demonstration in June 2006/1385 in Haft-e Tir Square in Tehran.

Front Line reported, on 17 January 2009, that Ghada Jamsheer, a woman human rights defender in Bahrain, had become the target of a harassment campaign. Ghada Jamsheer and her family have received threats, including many threatening text messages, and have been followed in a car.

Six leaders of a group managing the Baha'i community's religious and administrative affairs in Iran were arrested at their homes by officers from the Ministry of Intelligence on 14 May 2008, and are now detained in Evin Prison in Tehran. A seventh person, acting secretary for the group, Mahvash Sabet, has been in detention since 5 March. The Baha'i community has long been persecuted by the Iranian government, especilly since the Iranian Revolution.

"In the latest killing, or at least the latest to come to public attention, Kurdistan Aziz was 16 years old when she escaped her family with a man she knew they would not accept, and courageously following the ancient tradition of 'radu kauten' they eloped together to Arbil, the capital city of Iraqi Kurdistan. They planned to start a life together. But her father had other ideas for her; not of love, happiness or choice but that she must die for this rebellion against the patriarchal order.